Teaching assembler

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue Jun 29 17:28:10 2004

> In our opinion, however, the most useful function served by a
> knowledge of assembler
> language programming is to give the user a much closer awareness of
> how the computer
> works, as well as inestimably greater control over its workings, than
> is feasible with
> a higher level language. In our experience, the higher level language
> user who is
> familiar with assembler language is a more efficient - even happier -
> programmer than
> one who is not.

I would definitely agree with that. Even though most of the (little)
programming I do now is in C, I am still darn glad I learnt assembler and
machine code. I think it makes me a slightly better programmer. And I
can't imagine a good computer hardware designer who doesn't understand
assembler!

> Those readers who want to proceed further, particularly into systems
> programming, will be
> ready after reading this book to refer to the manuals. A warning
> should be given that much
> less care goes into [the] preparation of the descriptive literature
> than into the machine
> itself and its software, and the manuals contain many obscurities and
> errors.

The PERQ POS manuals are a classic example of this. They're great at
reminding you of the details (the exact arguments to a system routine,
etc) if you already understand things, but they're really obscure if you
don't. It took me a long time to figure out some bits of those manuals...

-tony
Received on Tue Jun 29 2004 - 17:28:10 BST